ApeironChaos's Book Journey
I received The Pleasure of the Other by Sasha Arden from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This story is an absolute delight. I told my spouse it's like a spicy Golden Girls, and honestly, I mean that as the highest compliment.
The story follows three friends in their late sixties and early seventies, each navigating different circumstances in their relationships and personal lives. They support one another as they figure out what it means to pursue a meaningful, pleasurable life at this stage, carrying with them years of infidelity, divorce, disconnection, difficult choices, and the realization that they may never have fully known themselves in the first place.
What I loved most is that these women feel like people. They're flawed, complicated, sometimes uncertain and sometimes wonderfully confident, and unwilling to accept that the years ahead of them have to be bland or unsatisfying. Their experiences are distinct, and I could feel the thought and care that went into exploring each woman's circumstances, choices, and emotional reality.
And yes, this book is spicy, which we love. I want more stories that explore sex, desire, and relationships between people who have lived actual lives. Give me the wrinkles, the insecurities, the complicated histories, the changing bodies, and the pleasure of discovering something new about yourself when you thought you already knew who you were. I want books that remind us that life doesn't stop at a certain age or milestone, and that intimacy, reinvention, and joy aren't reserved for people in their twenties.
The plot was another lovely surprise. I worried I might get bored, but I was never bored. The story went in directions I didn't expect, and the pacing made this a genuinely fast, fun read. It's cozy and hot and emotionally grounded, with more substance than you might expect from a book that's so much fun to read.
We need more books like this. Stories about older women who are allowed to be sexual, messy, funny, vulnerable, and complicated, whose lives are still unfolding rather than winding down. The Pleasure of the Other manages to be both a delightfully entertaining read and a thoughtful exploration of what it means to keep choosing pleasure and fulfillment for yourself.
I'd recommend this to readers of just about any age. Come for the spice and the friendship, stay for the characters and the reminder that there's still so much life left to live.
A character driven literary novel with a sex scene frequency bordering on erotica, but this book was a more honest portrayal about desire, romantic relationships, and friendship than most other books I’ve read. I did not expect to love a book about the sex lives of 65+ year old ladies as much as I did! Final Score: 4.7
What Worked Well For Me
A trusted friend who knows my reading taste recommended this book to me and when that happens I don’t even read the blurb. I ended up binging this book within the day! It wasn’t until I was like halfway through this book that I read the tagline on the cover “It’s never too late to have great sex” and trust me - that needed no explanation - this book starts out with a bang, literally.
I love books with older protagonists, and these women felt like real women navigating very complex situations. Throughout the story these ladies have to face issues in their marriages, ex-husbands, grief, regret, bodies that don’t move like they used to - but their very touching friendship with one another is the ultimate throughline for me. It would be my greatest wish to have friendships like what these ladies have in their late 60s-70s. I don’t want this to come off as a fantasy aspect though, their friendship felt very real and earned! Arden had little quirks for each of the women that not only kept them distinct from one another, but made each character feel very fleshed out. I am begging for more authors and publishers to give us books that feature realistic, complex, nuanced, and at times even messy female protagonists like the ones we have in this book!! And bonus points for them being older protagonists!!
Even though a lot of this book is about these women’s sex lives and navigating their own sexuality, the core of it was about relationships between the women, their partners, their community and how they all intersect. Arden found a good balance between all of the story lines, so I didn’t notice any character was taking up too much page time or missing in action.
In some literary novels, you really need to have patience - I don’t think most readers are going to have to have much patience. I think you’ll know right away if this book might be a good fit for you. The pace felt very steady throughout the entire book.
Alright, let’s talk about these ladies sex lives because I know y’all are curious - I was too! I want to be very clear that the many scenes either talking about sex in explicit terms or are an explicit scene aren’t a critique from me or the primary selling point here, but I do have some praise around these scenes. This is just something I want you to know before you start this book. The frequency of these scenes was getting pretty close to erotica levels imo, but in erotica the explicit scenes often feel like they are the main goal of the book and that is NOT the case here. The themes these women are working through are explored through the lens of their sex lives/sexuality, so I never felt like a sex scene was there for shock value or, frankly, to get the reader off. However, I do want to give kudos here because these scenes were some of the most refreshingly honest sex scenes I have ever read and I read a lot of romance. There are a lot of different kinds of sex depicted in this book: vanilla sex, public sex, masturbation, swinging and infidelity, and more. So much so I felt like double the prude of any of these women even though I’m half their age! I did not expect to blush as much as I did throughout this book, but also given the number of sex scenes in this book I also didn’t cringe as much as I would have expected to. (And I mean this as a compliment!)
I also want to mention the prose since this is a literary novel - sometimes I go into literary novels for exemplary prose and while I wouldn’t say there is a particular literary flourish to the prose here, it’s clean, solid, and very bingeable (clearly). But I don’t think that was the point of this book - the characters, their relationships, and their situations were what kept me hooked, and particularly for a debut novel I was very impressed!
Where It Fell Short For Me
My critiques are very minor and might really come down to personal preference.
Some of the sex scenes use euphemisms like “girl parts” or “love button” and if these are used too frequently it will kill a book for me. Thankfully, these euphemisms were used relatively sparingly, however they were juxtaposed with plenty of frank terminology (which I have no problem reading but won’t be putting in a public review), so jumping to a euphemism felt a little odd. My guess is that with this many scenes maybe Arden was worried about overusing certain terms, but personally I would take repetition over euphemisms.
This is more of a missed opportunity in my opinion, but Catherine’s ex-husband is probably the only side character I would call pretty flat. Since this is post-divorce and told from the perspective of three loyal friends, it makes sense that he would be painted as purely a villain, but it would have been nice to humanize him a little.
A couple of small heads up for readers: 1 This is set in 3rd person POV, but the protagonists often switch within a single chapter - it was always very clear to me who we were following even with the switches, but I know some readers really prefer one chapter per character so I wanted to flag it. It might also cause a little confusion as you are just getting to know these ladies. 2 The blurb references their weekly lunches which almost gives me a “sitcom” feeling, like we get our weekly catch up and then come back next week. That’s not what happens here, we are following these ladies as they live their lives and we see them gather for lunch regularly. Along a similar vein, there are also some small time jumps were multiple weeks have passed - it’s totally fine in the narrative, but it conflicted with the weekly lunches in the blurb so I wanted to flag it.
Audiobook Experience
I tandem read this one and while you can definitely pick your preferred format, I really enjoyed the audiobook in particular! It’s narrated by Susan Bennet who delivers a FANTASTIC performance!! While I wouldn’t say the protagonists' voices were super different from each other, between the text and Bennett’s narration choices, it was always very clear who was speaking. Where I think Bennet really shined was how she was able to channel each of the characters and adapt to the scenes in a very balanced way where the audio was elevated above straight narration without going overboard with it either. There are some really funny moments in this novel and Bennett definitely helped those moments land, but I also want to highlight that they helped the sex scenes land too. Sometimes when a narrator really acts during sex scenes it can make things more awkward for me than when I’m just reading the scene myself, however, Bennett found a great balance here as well! There were moments where they would emphasize certain words or change the breathiness of their dialogue that worked really well!
Audio quality wise, this audiobook is solid! I didn’t even notice any volume changes from edits! No technical glitches either!
A tip with the audiobook: I’m very pale and when I blush, I'm practically a lobster. With how frequent the sex scenes are, if you also go beet red when you blush, maybe don’t listen to this one in public.
Final Thoughts, Opinions & Recommendations
This would be a FANTASTIC pick for a book club, assuming your book club is comfortable talking about sex scenes. I 100% see why my friend really wanted me to read this one, not only was it a great match for me, I fully see why you really really want to talk about this one with your girlfriends in particular! This book gave me so much to chew on and even though there were a few moments where I was a smidge uncomfortable or cringed, 99% of the time this book was very, very refreshing!! I wish more books handled these “taboo” topics with such love, joy, and care!
You Might NOT Like This If: You tend to skip sex scenes in books - I won’t say that’s impossible with this one, but you’d be missing a lot since the themes are explored through those scenes. You are looking for just a gentle cozy comedy about older women - my friend who recommended this described this as Spicy Golden Girls and I really want to emphasize the spicy aspect of that description. You read literary fiction specifically for innovation, beautiful prose - the prose is solid, but the character work is the driving factor here.
Recommendations - Kind Of
- The frankness and honesty of these women talking about their sexual desires reminded me a bit of Want by Gillian Anderson which is non-fiction. Admittedly, I actually had to put that one down because it was too much for me personally. Both books felt empowering and refreshing while exploring women’s sexuality
- Characterwise: These ladies reminded me of Sybil from The Correspondent by Virgina Evans at points (but thematically, pretty different books) and their friendship, humor, and “just because you’re old doesn’t mean your life is over” vibe reminded me of the cast from The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (obviously, very different genre).
- The book also comps to All Fours by Miranda July, which I actually paused very early on because it felt like it was a bit too much - but I always planned on coming back to that one. So if you’ve read that one, you might have better expectations going into this one than I did.
- One I haven’t read, but I have on my TBR - this book reminded me of Three Women by Lisa Taddeo or at least what I’ve heard about it!
A final personal note with this one: This book was a bold choice for a debut and I respect the hell out of Arden for this!! This book instantly made them very memorable for me and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for any future work from them!! I said this at the top of the review, but I really want to emphasize I am begging authors and publishers to give us more books like this!!!
My thanks to NetGalley & Taag & Rohg for the complimentary copy. The Pleasures of the Other is set to publish on 11/9/26. All opinions are my own.
TL;DR
Would I Recommend it? Yes if you can handle the spice! Would I Reread it? I’m not the biggest re-reader, but I would definitely consider re-reading this one. Would I Continue the Series/Read More From This Author? YES! Spice Level: 5 Erotic/Blazing - Books that feature multiple, highly detailed or adventurous scenes throughout. These can include explicit erotica elements, multiple partners, toys, or BDSM, where the physical connection takes center stage. Series Information: True Standalone
Star Score Breakdown
Personal Enjoyment: 4.75 Overall Execution: 4.75 Craft & Writing Quality: 4.25 Characters: 5 Plot: 4.75 Final Score: 4.7
Edit: Why do I always find a typo as soon as I post? I swear I DO re-read these!
Also, while I'm here shout out to @lukewarmreader for recommending this one! 🔗 Link to their review of this book here
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ApeironChaos commented...
1w
yoink thank you so muuuuuuuch!